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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Can I Have a Wordle With You?

This is a Wordle created from my blog's RSS feed. Taking a long hard look at the words that are most often used in my blog is a great way to analyze my blog's direction. Can't say I'm surprised by anything I see, but I'm amused that the word "Questions" is the most prominent, considering my blog's tagline is "Ask Questions, Ask Lots of Questions." I guess I do...In an effort to start my very own meme, I am tagging a few bloggers to do the following, however anyone can do this. Please feel free to participate and if you do please leave a comment letting us know.

1. Create a Wordlefrom your blog's RSS feed.2. Blog it and describe your reaction. Any surprises?3. Tag others to do the same.4. Be sure to link back here and to where you were first tagged.

A few weeks ago, I posted 20 potential uses for Wordle. Some great ideas were added in the comments, and I'm thinking others might be willing to contribute their ideas: http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2008/10/top-20-uses-for-wordle.html

Well, here's a link to mine. Not the greatest of examples, namely because right now it's composed entirely of the 30D2BBB challenge! Because of that, I'm going to hold off on posting the meme until next week as well.

Here is a link to the post about my Wordle. http://digital-doors.blogspot.com/2008/11/blog-words-wordle-meme.html Mine is rather BLOG heavy right now thanks to Teach42s challenge. Did a challenge using Wordle a few weeks ago. That was the most talked about challenge so far. The teachers loved it. http://sites.google.com/site/web20wednesdaychallenge/week-7

I'm so proud to see strong, academic words such as, "really, way, like, and just" are getting such good use in my writing. I'm sure it bumps the readability of my blog all the way up to about the 3.1 level. I mean, I really just like the way that sounds.

I've been playing with Wordle since school started in September. This was a fun way to look at my own writing in a new way. Here's my blog with my Wordle clouds: http://nlcommunities.com/communities/magistra_m/archive/2008/11/28/201214.aspx

Neat! I use Wordle to make graphics for presentations and to show teachers how easy it is to analyze speeches and other pieces of writing. This was the first time to look at myself 'through the Wordle glasses' though. Enjoyed it!

Just thought of another way I have seen Wordle used. At my EETT training, the trainer had each of us create a Wordle of our experiences so far with Peer Coaching. We then did a gallery walk to see what everyone had created. Great conversations.

Just used Wordle to create my Holiday Cards. I used wordle.net/advanced. It has options for weighing words and coding colors etc.

@everyone!Your Wordles are so inspiring. Each one says a little something different about the personality of your blogs, yet the common thread is all about students and learning. It's been awesome to watch the meme make its way across so many blogs. I hope it will continue on. Thanks for commenting.

Wordle is an excellent classroom tool. It is one of the methods of proofreading that I suggest to students. By using Wordle, the students can see their paper in a different light- no longer is it a paper but an image with the words they use most often big and bold before them. You have to change the max number of words and also tell it not to skip words, but when you do it will help with finding repetitions in your work, make sure you've stayed on task (if the biggest and boldest words have nothing to do with your paper, consider revising), and so forth. I also suggest using sites like Readthewords.com to have the paper read to them so they can hear it, see it, and read it in hopes of making them better readers and writers.http://www.collaterallearning.com/2008/09/what-did-i-say/